Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  Nuri had a brief glimpse of his face as the bullet tore into Stefan’s throat. He scrambled backward as Stefan grabbed the injury and fell to his knees. Blood spread from Stefan’s mouth and from both sides of the wound. He swayed on his knees, and for a moment Nuri was certain that he had killed him.

  Then he saw the edges of the exposed wound pulling together, as if the flesh was so much bleeding clay. He backed away from Stefan, and glanced back toward where the first two lay. The first one, the one who held a pickax, was still face down, but now his head was intact, and his limbs were beginning to vibrate as if he was having a seizure.

  The wounded Stefan still knelt in front of him, but the wound was almost gone. He was hissing, and his face was distorting.

  Nuri had one bullet left. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t abandon Stefan again. Nuri looked into Stefan’s face, and saw eyes that seemed a well of pain slicing into his mind. Nuri stepped to the side as Stefan lowered his lengthening hands from the wound in his neck. The only sign of the damage now was the blood. He reached a clawed hand toward Nuri as Nuri edged around him.

  Nuri brought the butt of his gun down across the back of Stefan’s skull. Stefan’s eyes widened as a clawed hand grabbed Nuri’s leg. Nuri brought the gun down again.

  Stefan’s eyes rolled and he fell forward.

  Nuri looked at his friend’s body and sucked in copper breaths as he looked for signs of life. The body didn’t seem to breathe. Nuri was almost certain Stefan was dead, until he looked closely at the gash where his gun had landed. Even in the dark he could see the edges of the wound knitting together.

  Close by he heard moaning coming from the two he had shot in the head. The sound was mindless and chilling. He had to get out of here.

  This time he wasn’t going to leave Stefan.

  He holstered his gun, grabbed Stefan by the shoulders, and began dragging him back toward the dark truck that was still parked by the road. The ground cut into his feet as he made his way backwards toward the road.

  The moaning began to sound like an animal growl. He couldn’t see any of the bodies any more. They had been lost in the darkness. Nuri’s heart raced as the growls deepened, and seemed to move.

  They seemed to come from all directions, echoing beneath the bridge, getting louder.

  Nuri backed into the door of the truck, and he scrambled to get the door open and drag Stefan’s unconscious body inside. Nuri was halfway across the seat, Stefan only half in the truck, when something leaped at the cab. Part of the roof caved inward, and the glass in the front window shattered, spraying shards across Nuri and Stefan.

  Nuri was only half in the driver’s seat, and he tried to run the clutch and the gas with one foot as he hit the starter. The engine made evil grinding noises as he shifted, but it lurched forward.

  Nuri was driving and trying to pull Stefan all the way into the door when something else hit the truck hard enough to make it swerve slightly.

  Nuri drove the truck as fast as he could push it, rocketing through the uneven roads of the Flats. As the truck shook across the broken pavement, something landed on top of the hood of the truck. It had jumped off of the top of the cab and it smashed the hood inward. The thing was wolflike, its face a naked slavering muzzle filled with dagger teeth. Across its leathery torso, it wore the bloody remnants of a cheap suit.

  Nuri swerved the truck madly, trying to shake this thing off the front. It hung on tenaciously, talons piercing the truck’s hood, twisting the metal into handholds for it.

  It gibbered madly at him, nonsense syllables combined with an animal growling. It leaned into the driver’s side, opening its jaws to tear at him. Nuri jerked the wheel to the left, trying to evade the creature’s bite.

  The truck jumped the curb and slammed head-on into a low brick wall. Nuri was thrown against the wheel with a force enough to crack his ribs. The thing on the hood tumbled backwards into the remains of the wall.

  Nuri tried a few futile times to get the truck moving again, but the engine just whined at him. Something was moving in the back, and Nuri smelled gas. He reached over Stefan and tried to open the passenger door. When it didn’t give, Nuri raised his foot and kicked it open. The door sprang open and Stefan fell out into the street.

  Nuri scrambled out of the cab.

  Even though the creature on the hood was buried under a pile of bricks, it still moved. Nuri heard the grinding sound of bricks rubbing together.

  As he grabbed Stefan’s collar and began dragging his unconscious form across the street, something began tearing at the canvas cover over the rear of the truck—tearing from the inside. Nuri could see the claws sticking out of the canvas as it shredded the cover.

  Nuri allowed one hand for Stefan and pulled out his gun with the other. He hesitated, because the smell of gas was everywhere, even his stocking feet felt newly wet. Back by the truck, the ground glistened. Nuri kept backing away, saving his shot.

  But he had little chance. In a moment the thing in the back had torn itself free of the canvas. It was even larger and more feral-looking than the one that had landed on the hood. And it still carried the pickax.

  The other one had freed itself from the tumbled masonry, and it stood on the cab, turning toward Nuri.

  Nuri fired.

  The shot was wild, with him firing one-handed. It sparked off the brick street in front of the truck. As Nuri had feared, the glistening street erupted into a sheet of fire.

  Nuri dropped the gun and grabbed Stefan with his other hand. He had dragged Stefan through the puddle of gasoline, and he was soaked with it. Nuri pulled him backward as fast as he could, as flames enveloped the broken truck.

  He made it to the other side of the street, to a small ditch filled with stagnant water. He rolled Stefan into it and followed, more concerned with the fire than any demonic pursuit.

  It wasn’t until he was standing ankle-deep in the drainage ditch that he thought of the two creatures by the truck. He looked back.

  In a few seconds the truck had become little more than shadow in a rolling sheet of fire. From the fire came a high breathless wail that Nuri knew didn’t come from the flames. On either side of the truck were two humanoid figures, themselves little more than shadows wrapped in fire. They were moving away from the burning vehicle, but even as they stepped out of the radius of fire, the fire accompanied them. Neither made it more than ten feet before collapsing on the street.

  On the street in front of Nuri, he could see his own footsteps blaze and gutter out.

  10

  Monday, August 22

  The burning of Cleveland’s shantytowns was only the prelude. Police descended on the Roaring Third in a house-to-house search for the murderer. Even as police kicked in doors and crawled through every room in the precinct, looking for signs of the killing ground, the papers were beginning to sound sour notes about Ness.

  The press couldn’t stop what had become the largest manhunt in the city‘s, and perhaps the nation’s, history. The house-to-house search found prostitutes and pimps, gambling halls and numbers runners, conmen, thieves, and hustlers ...

  But no killing ground.

  The priest’s office was crowded by bookshelves and files. Papers towered over Nuri. The man behind the desk, Father Gerwazek, was older than Nuri expected, his hair snow-white, his hands liver-spotted. Aside from that, the man gave a reassuring impression of solidity.

  The priest pushed his thick glasses back on his nose and looked at Nuri, “But you won’t tell me this man’s name?”

  Nuri shook his head. “I’ve told you all I can.”

  “But you want me to agree to come with you and retain your confidence?” Gerwazek shook his head. “You’re asking a lot from an old man.”

  “My friend needs a priest,” Nuri felt odd saying that.

  Nuri had already seen his own rabbi, for the first time in years. While he never had the courage to explain fully what had happened, Rabbi Schimmel had heard enough from Nuri to realize that they’
d been talking about a Catholic man in some sort of spiritual crisis. “If this man was a Jew,” he’d said, “would you take him a priest? It’s his faith, not yours.” Nuri had still almost taken his friend to temple while he was still unconscious. In the end he had thought better, and followed Rabbi Schimmel’s advice. It wasn’t his belief that mattered, it was Stefan’s, and the beliefs of those things in the darkness.

  Nuri shook his head. “I’ve done what I can for him, and it isn’t enough.”

  “And you won’t tell me where he is?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  Gerwazek seemed to debate with himself for a moment and then asked, “What made you decide to come to me?”

  “I think my friend used to be part of your parish.”

  After a while Father Gerwazek sighed and said, “I won’t turn away a request for aid, even if the secrecy makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Thank you,” Nuri said, standing and offering his hand. “If it makes you feel better, think of this as a confession.”

  Nuri drove Gerwazek in a borrowed unmarked car. The priest made few comments as Nuri drove, aside from asking him once if he was Catholic. More than once Nuri wondered if he was doing the right thing. He was at the end of his rope. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Stefan needed help, and the help he needed seemed way beyond anything he could provide.

  Eventually he drove through the Euclid entrance to Lakeview Cemetery.

  “Here?” Gerwazek asked, voice uncertain.

  Nuri nodded. “I needed a special place. I suppose a church would be better.” Nuri maneuvered the car through twisting roads until he had passed a few hills into a quiet part of the cemetery. Behind them the sky was a flaming red beyond the imposing mass of the Garfield Monument.

  When Nuri parked the car, Gerwazek put a hand on his arm. “Where is your friend?”

  Nuri nodded up the hill, toward a large tomb set up on the hillside. “There’s a small chapel in there.”

  “He’s in there?” Gerwazek stared at him for a long time, his eyes distorted by his thick glasses. “Mr. Lapidos,” he asked, “is your friend alive?”

  Nuri let the silence stretch for a long time.

  Gerwazek squeezed his arm and said, “Mr. Lapidos?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

  The priest just stared at him, and Nuri could almost feel his own foreboding rubbing off on the priest. Nuri turned and said, “We have to wait until sunset.”

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Gerwazek muttered, more to himself than to Nuri.

  “I can take you back,” Nuri said. He wasn’t going to force anyone’s involvement in this. There would be other priests—

  “No, no,” Gerwazek waved his hand, dismissing the thought. He was now staring up at the tomb on the hill. “Are you going to tell me now what is going on?”

  “I think it’d be best to wait until you see him.” Nuri turned to watch what of the sunset he could see behind the Garfield Monument. The color slowly drained out of the sky, the monument darkening until it was only a squat silhouette. He turned to the priest and said. “I should warn you though, I’ve had to restrain him.”

  Gerwazek didn’t respond; he just continued to stare up at the tomb.

  Nuri didn’t let them leave the car until the last of the daylight had leaked from the sky. The place where they’d parked was in enough shadow that Nuri grabbed a flashlight so they could see their way to the tomb. Nuri went slowly, in deference to Gerwazek’s age, but the priest seemed to take the climb better than he did.

  “Why here?” Gerwazek asked as they reached the wrought-iron gate barring the door to the tomb.

  “Because of the chapel,” Nuri said. “A church would have been better, but I couldn’t take him to one without too many questions.” Nuri opened the gate; it was unlocked. “There are dark things connected to him now, things that are probably searching for him. I’m hoping that blessed ground might protect both of us.”

  Inside the tomb, there was a soft groaning. The sound was quiet, but it cut through the walls as if the stone was paper.

  Gerwazek stared at the closed door.

  “He’s awake,” Nuri told him. He could see the first signs of what might have been fear cross the priest’s face.

  Nuri pushed the inner door open on the darkened chamber, and took Gerwazek’s arm. “Come on. He needs our help.”

  They took a few steps inside, and Nuri swept the flashlight until it landed on Stefan.

  “Christ preserve us.” Gerwazek crossed himself.

  Stefan lay on the floor, under the flashlight beam. His clothes were filthy, torn, and covered with blood. The faint smell of gasoline still hung around him.

  His arms and legs were tied, and he was cowering in a corner as if trying to escape the cross on the wall above him.

  He turned to face Nuri and Gerwazek, his face sunken and pale, too close to the face of a corpse. “Let me return to Him,” he said in a whispery voice that was little louder than the wind outside. Even so, the words cut into Nuri’s ears as if they’d been shouted at him.

  Nuri responded, “I brought you a priest.”

  “More torture,” Stefan turned to look at Gerwazek. His eyes were dead, empty, black, though when Nuri looked into them, he thought something moved inside that darkness.

  Gerwazek must have seen it, too, because he crossed himself again.

  “I know you,” Stefan said to Gerwazek.

  Gerwazek nodded, staring at him. “What happened to you, Stefan?”

  Stefan laughed. The sound was weak, almost silent. “Can’t you smell it, Father? I’ve been damned. I’ve been dragged so far into the abyss that your presence is painful to me.” Stefan turned away to face the wall. “Tell him to let me go, Father. Let me return to the darkness where I belong.”

  Gerwazek turned toward Nuri, “What have you done to him?”

  “I had to restrain him, for his protection as well as mine—”

  Gerwazek looked up toward the ceiling whose shroud of darkness wasn’t pierced by the flashlight. “But here? He should be in a hospital.”

  Nuri shook his head. “Anywhere else, and he would die with the morning light. Anywhere else, and I’m sure his master would come for him.”

  “His master?” Gerwazek said. He looked down at Stefan, who had withdrawn into a silent immobility. He walked toward Stefan, his shadow falling across Stefan’s body. “Mr. Lapidos,” he said as he knelt over Stefan’s body, “you have to explain all this if you don’t want me to report what’s going on to the police.”

  Nuri walked up next to Gerwazek and said, “I am the police.”

  “Do your superiors know that you’re keeping prisoners in a cemetery?”

  Nuri shook his head.

  Gerwazek reached out a hand and felt Stefan’s neck. “He’s cold as ice.”

  “Be careful—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  Gerwazek turned to face Nuri and said, “There’s no pulse at all. You’ve killed him.”

  “Watch out,” Nuri said. Gerwazek turned, but a bit too late. Stefan had already turned his head and sank suddenly-long teeth into the meat of Gerwazek’s hand. Gerwazek gasped.

  “Damn it,” Nuri said. He raised his flashlight and brought it down across Stefan’s face. The light went out momentarily. When the flashlight flickered on again, Nuri saw that it had been enough of a distraction for Gerwazek to pull his hand free.

  Gerwazek held his bleeding hand and stared at Stefan. Nuri stared as well. As they watched, Stefan’s nose, smashed by the flashlight, reordered itself, straightening, shrinking, healing itself. The fangs also withdrew. In a few moments all that was left of the incident was the smeared blood on Stefan’s face.

  “What is this?” Gerwazek said quietly.

  “Do you believe in vampires, Father?”

  11

  Sunday, September 6

  Stefan wondered
how long they could keep him like this. They had shut him up in a small room. Stefan suspected it was underneath Father Gerwazek’s church, St. John’s. He had not fed for days, and most of the time he was too weak to get off of the small cot in the room.

  He wondered if it was possible for him to die of the hunger that gnawed inside him.

  Most of the time he just lay on the cot, eyes shut, feeling the void eat away inside him, only noting the passage of the day by the crushing fatigue that tried to claim him. Despite that, he never truly slept, not even the non-sleep that normally claimed him in the daylight hours.

  Worst of all, every night, Father Gerwazek would come in and talk to him. The man’s faith was a burning presence, uncomfortable to be near, and the smell of his blood was an agony—an agony that was never sated since Father Gerwazek would always stay behind the door to the room, too wary to enter after Stefan’s first taste of his blood.

  This night was like every other night so far. Gerwazek was at the door, the smell of his blood permeated the room, igniting Stefan’s painful thirst. He talked to Stefan, saying, “God has not abandoned you.”

  Stefan’s voice didn’t rise above a whisper. He stared at the ceiling as he said, “I was taken from God’s sight.”

  “No one has that power, Stefan.”

  “You know nothing of what happened to me.” Stefan’s whisper became harsh with anger. Father Gerwazek should smell Satan within him, the same way Stefan could smell the priest’s untainted blood. He should see Stefan with the loathing and fear that Stefan felt burn into him every time he saw that ember of faith burning behind Gerwazek’s eyes.

  “Our savior died for the wickedness of the world. That redemption is open to anyone who will take it. The only one who can deny that to you is yourself.”

  Stefan sprang at the door and screamed, “You know nothing of what happened to me.” On the other side of the door, he could hear Gerwazek stumble backward.